The most American Xbox game ever only came out in Japan
If you'd like to play a game where the current President of the United States pilots a mech to fight against a military coup staged by his Vice President, look no further than Metal Wolf Chaos - which, unfortunately, only saw a release in Japan. This 2004 From Software production (published by Microsoft, mind you) might have fallen a little too close to September 11, 2001 for Americans to have a sense of humor about uber-patriotism and attacks on their homeland. Now, 13 years later, Metal Wolf Chaos remains one of the most inspired (and hilarious) games to hit the original Xbox.
In its first four years, the Xbox 360 had a 23.7% failure rate
The infamous "red ring of death" made an astounding amount of Xbox 360s completely inoperable, presenting a monumental PR issue for Microsoft to overcome. But just how prevalent was this problem? According to an August 2009 report (opens in new tab) by warranty service provider SquareTrade, nearly a quarter of all 360s shipped by that point in time eventually failed to function. Thankfully, Microsoft's three-year warranty kept their customers happy, even if their mea culpa came with a one-billion dollar price tag attached.
Too Human took $60 million and nearly a decade to come together
Silicon Knights' Too Human looked to be the studio's magnum opus, but after nine years of platform switches - PlayStation to GameCube to 360 - and $60 million down the hole, the game limped into retail in summer 2008 and received a bounty of negative reviews. Obviously that helped sink any possible future for this "planned trilogy." And, believe it or not, Too Human's colossal failure wasn't even the worst thing to happen to Silicon Knights (opens in new tab).
An insane amount of Rare games never saw the light of day
Microsoft purchased Rare from Nintendo in 2002 for the princely sum of $375 million, and it was right at the time the developer seemed to be an unstoppable force of nature. While Rare produced the lamentable Grabbed by the Ghoulies and the strangely censored Conker's Bad Fur Day remake, the studio originally had much more ambitious plans, though nearly 20 of these planned projects (opens in new tab) never fully materialized. These cancelled games include a sequel to Kameo, a full-fledged MMORPG, and a survival horror game called Ordinary Joe.
